Sin­gling out hi­jab wearer with in­sults and threats is ‘an as­sault on all peo­ple’

Hate at­tacks like the in­ci­dent ear­lier this week sow fear in the com­mu­nity, es­pe­cially when the vic­tim is young and fe­male, lo­cal Mus­lim lead­ers say.

“It’s such a ter­ri­ble dis­ap­point­ing thing to hap­pen and ter­ri­fy­ing for the young woman who was ac­costed,” said Ha­roon Khan, trustee at Al Jamia Masjid Mosque in Van­cou­ver. “Women out­wardly show their faith and mod­esty with the hi­jab and this guy be­came un­hinged and as­saulted her. It’s an as­sault on all peo­ple.”

Eigh­teen-year-old Noor Fadel was rid­ing the Canada Line SkyTrain wear­ing a hi­jab Mon­day when a man ac­costed her, scream­ing in­sults and threats to kill “all Muslims.”

When he tried to grab her head, fel­low pas­sen­ger Jake Tay­lor in­ter­vened.

The sus­pect, Peirre Belzan, 46, is charged with as­sault and threat­en­ing to cause death or bod­ily harm. Tran­sit po­lice are also rec­om­mend­ing he be charged with sex­ual as­sault. While he has no crim­i­nal record, Belzan is known to po­lice and ap­par­ently home­less.

“In­ci­dents like this are up­set­ting and it makes you feel real anger,” Khan said.

There was also dis­ap­point­ment in the Mus­lim com­mu­nity that only one pas­sen­ger stood up for Fadel.

“I hope most of us learn from this in­ci­dent that keep­ing silent is as good as help­ing the at­tacker,” said Ajaz Ahmed, city man­ager for the Na­tional Zakat Foun­da­tion Canada.

“This gives courage to cow­ards like (the man) who at­tack peo­ple they think are weaker than them,” he added.

Fadel has since al­lowed her fear to turn to grat­i­tude, that some­one was brave enough to stand up for her.

Over­tones of racism and Is­lam­o­pho­bia in the pub­lic arena are en­cour­ag­ing the far right and strike fear in im­mi­grant and re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties, Khan said.

“The over­all rhetoric out there seems to em­bolden this kind of thing,” he said.

“You can look back at this past sum­mer and the uptick in neoNazism. You see these char­ac­ters out there fan­ning the flames of ha­tred, putting out racist pam­phlets. Those things are very real.”

Far-right ex­trem­ism has flared up around the world and in Canada, ac­cord­ing to Ryan Scrivens, a mem­ber of the In­ter­na­tional Cy­ber­Crime Re­search Cen­tre at Si­mon Fraser Uni­ver­sity who stud­ies hate groups.

While Canada is home to wellor­ga­nized, far-right groups, this week’s in­ci­dent in such a di­verse city is “shock­ing,” he said.

But since the World Trade Cen­ter at­tack by ji­hadi ter­ror­ists, anti-ex­trem­ist law-en­force­ment agen­cies have been dis­tracted from other threats, he says.

“When we started do­ing this work in 2011, right-wing ex­trem­ism wasn’t even on the radar with law en­force­ment,” he said.

“The me­dia wasn’t re­port­ing on it, even though there were in­stances of hate and vi­o­lence not un­like what we saw in Van­cou­ver.

“That is slowly start­ing to shift, but it’s very dif­fi­cult to tell where (anti-ex­trem­ist) re­sources are be­ing spent,” he said.

I hope most of us learn from this in­ci­dent that keep­ing silent is as good as help­ing the at­tacker.

AJAZ AHMED, Na­tional Zakat Foun­da­tion Canada

ARLEN RE­DEKOP

Jake Tay­lor came to the as­sis­tance of Noor Fadel af­ter she was at­tacked on the Canada Line on Mon­day. A man has since been charged with as­sault and threat­en­ing to cause death or bod­ily harm.

Comments

One key phrase from the initial article should be a clue: "known to the police". Clearly by his actions and that phrase, we can surmise that he has some mental issues. Unfortunately the target of his rage this time was this teen. with the mentally affected, anything can be a trigger. He is not indicative of anything but the systems failure to adequately treat the mentally affected.

NION: "Complicit", you mean like the complicity we see from many in the Muslim community after the latest suicide bombing, truck attack or shooting by a Muslim "extremist". Funny how you LOVE to apply similarly discounted labels to your Muslim terrorists and ignore the complicity from their cohort.

The reason for the repeat coverage of this incident is evident in the article itself. Approximately half of this report concerns itself with the political spin put on this incident, which goes something like this...Canada is a hotbed of Naziis needing to be corrected by huge volumes of human rights legislation. The collateral damage of such legislation, unfortunately, is the erosion of democratic freedoms.